Anyone used chaste berries?

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Tayto

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Hello all,

Just wondering if anyone has tried chaste berries for a hormonal mare?

My mare is usually a lovely laid back lady but when she is in season she is a pain in the butt. I wouldnt mind putting up with this but I am hoping to show her through the summer and didnt want her playing up at shows. I wanted to use as natural a remedy as possible so opted for chaste berries.

WELL.......... a week of them and she was high as a kite! Spooking at nothing, on her toes on a hack, offering to take off etc!

This is not like her at all - even when she is in season she isnt like this. Has anyone else found their mares to go a bit loopy on this stuff?

PS - I have now stopped the chaste berries and my normal girly seems to have returned - phew :D
 
Sorry to hear they sent yours loopy and nothing to add sadly other than you've just helped me make my mind up not to try them on mine!
She is also a pain in the arse currently (coming into season every 2 weeks or so) but she needs no encouragement to spook at nothing and just generally try to kill us both!
Be interesting to see if anyone else has had the same reaction.
My mare did exactly the same thing mind when I tried her on Relax me so she's living on high fibre nuts now as I daren't try anything else :-(
 
I use chaste berry for my 10hh pony that I suspect has Cushings. I can't say he has been dancing on the ceiling, so cannot confirm your findings. Maybe try Oestress - I used to use that on a hormonal mare with success.
 
I do rate chaste berries, but they do come with caveats and like a lot of herbal medicines, the sellers don't seem to be interested in that. In humans, it's been shown to be very effective for hormonal imbalance, but one side effect is skin sensitization. My friend used to take it and describes it was 'walking ant syndrome', the feeling that ants are walking all over you.

I hadn't heard of that, before, but another friend was feeding it to her riggy gelding and was half way through the first tub. YM was shovelling it into the gelding (going through 1 Kg in two weeks of RigCalm!!) and I warned the friend of this side effect, suggesting he might be grumpy or more reactive during grooming or windy days. Turned out he DID become a lot more grumpy. So much so even the YM made the connection and stopped feeding it (she's a bit slow on the uptake with things like that!). I don't know yet if he's back to normal, as they stopped it last week and I haven't seen her, but interesting that you are also seeing a change.

I do feed it at the moment as Hormonise, the tincture, but I didn't go through the loading dose. These are hormones we're playing around with. I wouldn't take twice the number of contraceptive pills for the first two weeks, so don't think horses should, either.
 
I had mine on them for her first season of the year as she's not usally hormonal but this year she was really bad.

I noticed a difference in her attitude within a week and she came back to be my sweet mare.

I've since taken her off of them and she is still ok to handle etc. I would use them again for a short while if necessary.
 
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